Maazel beats a retreat

At the age of 83, the irrepressible Lorin Maazel, the maestro who once in London conducted all nine Beethoven symphonies in a single sweep,  has had to withdraw from a major concert series with the Berlin Philharmonic next week. Famed for his willingness - indeed eagerness - to replace other star conductors when they cancel an engagement, it’s Maazel himself, reputedly as the result of an accident, who has had to drop out this time.

A familiar figure at the Edinbugh Festival, he was once in the middle of  conducting Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra at the Usher Hall when a viola player collapsed, but the performance proceeded without pause. While neighbouring players eased their ailing colleague out of his seat and carried him from the platform, Maazel went on conducting as if nothing had happened, thereby enthralling the music critic of the Scottish Daily Express who, at the time, was also its Edinburgh editor, Gilbert Cole. Gilbert took a close personal interest in the story, reporting, I remember, on its outcome (which turned out to be happy) rather than on the quality of the performance.

Among world-class conductors, Maazel has never been a critics’ favourite, especially when he has laid down his baton, which at one time he sometimes did,  in order to play a violin concerto as an interlude in the middle of a concert. Yet, for all his flash, he is someone for whom I have always had a soft spot. His recording of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, the hardest of the cycle to bring off, remains a triumph, exemplary in its sustaining power, precision, and structural control.  

One of the first times I heard him, at the Berlin Festival half a century ago, his concert with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra was a memorable coupling of Berg’s Violin Concerto and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges.  Yehudi Menuhin was soloist in the Berg, a work he had never tackled before, and which he played, I thought, with more beauty of tone than he often brought to Beethoven or Brahms. 

As for the Ravel, with Jane Berbie (the sort of mezzo-soprano whom today’s critics seem inclined to dismiss as dumpy) in exquisite voice as the naughty  child, it had one of the most ravishing performances it has ever been my good fortune to hear.

30 May 2014